Teatro de la Luna: Delirio Habanero

October 11, 2011 - 4:00 pm

Participants:

Cast of Teatro de la Luna

Ben Rodriguez-Cubeñas, Rockefeller Brothers Fund

Linda Howe, Wake Forest University

Ana María Hernández, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY

The Cuban theater troupe Teatro de la Luna will visit The Graduate Center to discuss the musical Delirio Habanero/ Havana Delirium by Alberto Pedro. The troupe will be in New York to perform this piece at local theatres. Delirio Habanero is set in 1990s Havana during the ‘Special Period in Times of Peace,’ marked by the collapse of the Soviet Union and Cuba’s freefall into economic, social, and moral near-chaos. Three tattered souls who believe they are Celia Cruz, the Queen of Salsa, Beny Moré, the King of Rhythm, and Varilla, the famous barman of the Bodeguita del Media, made famous by Hemingway in the 1950s, sing, dance, and banter about their lives and troubles to escape from the crumbling world outside. Memories and song help them to relive glorious experiences as they face an inevitable fate. These interactions comment on political and racial divisions and fragmented societies yearning for reconciliation.

Since the mid-1990s, the award-winning, internationally acclaimed Teatro de la Luna has performed dynamic plays presenting the identities, histories, memories, and current problems of Latin Americans and their immigrant populations. The company has traveled throughout the world, but in 2004, travel to the US was restricted. In 2010, those restrictions were lifted, allowing one of the best theater companies in Cuba to premiere the musical Delirio Habanero by renowned Afro-Cuban playwright Alberto Pedro in Winston-Salem. The Teatro de la Luna visit to the United States is sponsored by Wake Forest University and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.